ArtAp 10
Module 0
Introduction to Art
A HUMAN PHENOMENON
Dona Schlesier and Margaret Lazzari
- Art is strictly a human phenomenon.
- Only Human Beings create art to
understand life better/communicate
emotions to others
- It is primarily a visual medium that
expresses ideas about our human
experience and the world around us
- It engages our attention in a way
that our everyday environment
cannot
- Allows us to originate something
What is art? → What is art for whom and
when?
- Art is whatever society or culture
says is art (the definition of art is not
universal or fixed)
4 Major Areas of what Art is
A. Function
- art, at the time it was made, is
intended to do a job within a culture
- Can function as cultural records that
can tell us about existing and past
cultures
- ■ Art assists us in rituals that
promote our spiritual or physical
well-being.
- ■ Art reflects customs related to
food, shelter, and human
reproduction.
- ■ Art communicates thoughts, ideas,
and emotions.
- ■ Art gives us pictures of deities, or
helps us conceive of
- what divinity might be.
- ■ Art serves and/or commemorates
the dead.
- ■ Art glorifies the power of the state
and its rulers.
- ■ Art celebrates war and conquest,
and sometimes peace.
- ■ Art is a means for protesting
political and social
- injustice.
- ■ Art promotes cohesion within a
social group.
- ■ Art records the likenesses of
individuals and their
- environment.
- ■ Art educates us about ourselves
and the world
- around us.
- ■ Art entertains.
B. Visual Form
- Art has a visual form that allows the
work to be seen and touched, and its
ideas to be communicated (includes
formal elements like lines, volumes,
etc.) materials matter as well
C. Content
- Art has content, which is the mass of
ideas associated with each artwork
and communicated through its
imagery, symbolic meaning,
surroundings, customs, and beliefs.
Status, and writings
- Content can both be immediately
apparent and require considerable
study
D. Aesthetics
- Art is an aesthetic experience
*Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy
that deals with art, its sources, its
forms, and effects
- Aesthetics is a critical reflection on
art within a culture and reflects the
preferences of a large segment of
the culture’s population
Creating Art
● Perception, Response, and
Expression
 - The visual perception that is
required for making or looking at art
is focused and concentrated.
Art is designed to be arresting, to engage
our attention, to make us look and be aware
of our act of looking, and be enriched
- All artwork reflects the artists’
response to the world (their POV,
values and individual experiences)
Art reflects humankind’s perceptions of and
responses to all aspects of spiritual life and
earthly life
- Each artist/culture might express
these life experiences differently
Art is differently expressed through the
creator's response
● Artistic Creativity
- Creativity allows us to originate
something or to cause some object
to come into being.
*In the US creativity requires: Innovation
and Self-Expression (not necessarily the
case since artists can follow formulas etc)
- Creativity can be a complex mix of
old and new
*Contemporary Artists believe that creative
process starts with a formative
stage(response), vivid
experience/commission, research, and
experimentation, and the creation of artwork
*Creativity has a social dimension. Support
from others allows for creativity to bloom
Categories of Visual Art
A. Fine Art
- Is a Western category of refined
objects considered to be among the
supreme cultural achievements of
the human race
- Transcend average human works
and may be produced by only the
best artists with unique sensibilities
- What is displayed in art museums
Definitions of fine art are in flux when
Western people look at art from other
cultures
It has also expanded to include film,
performance, computer art, etc.
B. Popular Culture
- Magazines, movies, TV shows, etc
- Popular Art is often perceived as
being more accessible, inexpensive,
entertaining, commercial, political,
naive, and colorful
- It reflects the values and structures
of our societal social systems
Some objects from popular culture
eventually “become” art
* Kitsch - a subcategory of popular culture.
It is by comparison shallow/pretentious or
overly calculated to be popular.
- Objects and images are
kitsch if they display an
emotional appeal that is
generalized, superficial, and
sentimental; does not provide
an original experience
C. Craft
- Refers to specific media (ceramics,
woodworking, jewelry, glass,
weaving)
- Usually making objects rather than
images; may involve surface
decoration; may have a utilitarian
purpose
- They display aesthetic and/or
conceptual dimensions that go
beyond mundane use
Stylistic Categories
Style is the manner of artistic expression
characteristic either of an individual artist,
historic period, or an entire civilization
Style Vocabulary
1. Art is Naturalistic
- Generally contains
recognizable imagery that is
 depicted very much as seen
in nature
2. Art is representational
- It contains entities from the
world in recognizable form
3. Idealized art is modified naturalistic
way
- Strives for perfection within
the bounds of the values and
aesthetics of a culture
4. Expressive or Expressionist
- Communicate heightened
emotions and often a sense
of urgency or spontaneity
- Bold and immediate;
distorted or abstract;
asymmetrical or off balance;
textured surface and thick
paint application
5. Classical Art
- Orderly, balanced, clear, and
well proportioned
- Can also describe a point in
evolution of styles: classical
works represent the full
development of a certain
style
Classical refers to the aer made in ancient
Greece in the 5th centure BCE
6. Surreal
- Refers to art with
bizarre/fantastic arrangement
of images/ materials, as if
tapping into the workings of
the unconscious mind
- Undermines the pleasuresof
two senses in a dreamlike
way
7. Nonobjective
- Art contains imagery that is
completely generated by the
artist
- Contains invented imagery
that does not imitate
appearance of things in the
natural world
● Abstract imagery may
or may not be
recognizable, but it
has been derived
from reality by
distorting, enlarging,
and/or dissecting
objects and figures
from nature nut it is
still representational
Cultural Styles
- Consists of recurring and distinctive
features that we see in many works
of art emanating from a particular
place or era
- Reflect and express the cultures
from which they come
- Evolves
Culture
- Can mean the totality of
ideas, customs, skills, and
arts to a particular group or
people
- May also be a particular
group or people
Civilization
- A highly structured society
Artistic Style
- The distinguishing characteristics of
one artist’s works
1. "Art is strictly a human phenomenon” as
asserted by Dona Schlesier and Margaret
Lazzari in their book Exploring Art: A Global,
Thematic Approach. Do you agree or
disagree with the arguments supporting
their claim? What are the functions of art in
human society that you can resonate with
within the Philippine context?
- I do agree with the statement that art
is strictly a human phenomenon. For
art to be an art, by definition, it
requires to have a function, content,
 visual form, and aesthetic. These
four major aspects, i believe, can
only be achieved through a human.
We’ve seen videos of animals doing
art but we know that these animals
are heavily influenced and guided by
humans. They can create art but not
on their own volition. I believe that
art is a human phenomenon since it
is our way of expressing ourselves
and finding meaning in the natural
world. Art is seen, felt, produced
and defined through ones own
intention/work. One prominent
example was during the campaign of
Leni robredo. Art was seen
allthroughout the PH Leni-Kiko
murals were visible everywhere
which relates back to the function of
art which is the promotion of
cohesion within a group. Art can
unite people as well inspire people.
Art, in this context, kept us hopeful
Module 1
Encountering Art
Objective VS Subjective
Object - something which is metaphysical,
real, and existing independent of our
perception of it.
Subject - something which observers,
usually a person of some kind
Objective - if it is independent of our
opinions on it. It exists without observation.
A property is objective if particular objects
can have that property regardless of any
subject’s opinion about the objective.
Subjective - means that it depends on a
subject for its existence or properties. Our
perception of a particular object gives it
particular properties.
- Beauty is subjective. There is no
universal standard of beauty after
the 18th and 19th century
- The study of aesthetics is not
essentially about beauty but "critical
reflection on art within a culture and
reflects the preferences of a large
segment of the culture’s population";
also suggests that the study of
beauty "goes beyond individual
tastes or preferences"
- aesthetics is a "critical reflection on
art" also suggests that the study of
beauty "goes beyond individual
tastes or preferences" Though
beauty is mostly subjective, there
are aspects of it as 'objective.'
- Though beauty is mostly subjective,
there are aspects of it as 'objective.'
David Hume 1711-1776
Of the Standard of Taste (1757)
Republished in Hume’s Essays Moral,
Political and Literary, 1777
1. What does Hume understand by a
standard of taste in the arts?
● Beauty and Deformity are NOT
qualities of (or in) objects as, for
instance, the shape is.
● Whether an object is judged
beautiful depends on the FEELINGS
of observers.
● The Standard of Taste determines
WHICH feelings are the appropriate
ones to experience and WHOSE
judgment is best
But how can there be a standard with
regard to the feelings or sentiments
of different human beings?
Consider Colours: even if colours only exist
in the mind, we possess a STANDARD for
judging the true colour of an object
Similarly, we can have a standard for
judging the beauty of an object – even
though it is determined by the feelings of
(some) observers
In each case, we can justify our judgments
on the basis of the sensations or feelings of
a standard judge: a standard colour judge
(for colours) and a true critic (for beauty)
Five conditions which are required for or
associated with being a ‘true critic’ :
1. The Delicacy of Taste,
2. Lack of Prejudice,
3. Practice,
4. Comparison,
5. Good Sense.
Critical - involving making fair, careful
judgments about the good and bad qualities
of somebody/something
READING THE IMAGE
Alice Guillermo
She highlights the importance of the
complex interrelatedness of the intellectual,
emotional, and sensory specifications being
conveyed by the artist through one's chosen
medium, symbols/signs, subject matter, and
personal context. The viewer, on the other
hand dialogues with the artwork and brings
one's context in the reception and reading of
the work--cultural background, artistic
exposure and training, and human
experience. In this vein, the task of the text
reveals something more about the viewer
rather than the artwork itself.
Kinds of images produced in society today:
I. Images in the Traditional Arts
- Often articles of everyday life
combining design and function
- May bear images in the form of
symbols and motifs, which may
convey narratives of communal
significance
- Most are drawn from the
natural world and reflect the
close relationship between
humans and nature in the
animist world view
- Juxtaposed/arranged in a
meaningful series
- May contain their own visual
vocabulary and symbolisms (textiles,
embroidery, etc.)
- Colors are also conveyors of
meaning
- It is not enough to appreciate their
beauty and skill of execution but also
examine their conditions of
production (These involve the
community’s difficult struggle to
maintain its identity
- One can also distinguish world views
and value-systems distinct from
those of urban western-influenced
societies
- Olrality and literacy are not in
opposition, nor does one necessarily
replace the other. These two modes
of expression exist simultaneously
and complement each other
II. Images in Everyday life
- Disseminated in the print and TV
media
- Convey values and attitudes
favorable to certain social
groups/classes
- These values and attitudes are
conveyed covertly through
subliminal inducements or hidden
persuaders that operate semiotically
III. Images in Contemporary Arts
- Founds in painting, sculpture,
drawings, illustrations, cartoons,
posters, murals, photographs, and
film
- Conveyed through various media
- Can either be representational or
nonrepresentational or a fusion of
both
- Represents reality